


The End

by Singofsolace



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra, Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Non-Linear Narrative, One Shot Collection
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:13:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24877507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Singofsolace/pseuds/Singofsolace
Summary: In the end, they both have marks.A collection of stories about Lin Beifong and Tenzin's complicated history.
Relationships: Lin Beifong/Tenzin
Comments: 4
Kudos: 46





	1. Tattoos

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was originally posted on fanfiction.net eight years ago (!). With the new influx of Avatar fans, and my distaste for the advertisements ff.net forces upon its readers, I've decided to share this collection again on Ao3 instead. Each chapter exists within the same story--they aren't unrelated ficlets, but rather part of the same complicated web of their life together (and apart).
> 
> Please know that I wrote this before information about how Lin got her scars was available. In fact, much of this fic became non-canon compliant as LoK went on, which contributed to me wanting to end it. But the universe I created runs parallel to that of canon--it's not a true "alternate universe" in the sense that it is absolutely true to all of the information I had available to me back in 2012. The entire thing is 66,000+ words, so be sure to hit "subscribe." I will be adding chapters one by one, so that hopefully the fic can reach the most amount of people.
> 
> Please let me know what you think!

In the end, they both have marks.

Lin wears hers proudly. The battle scars, strikingly apparent against her skin just days after her eighteenth birthday, mark her as a warrior.

Tenzin, skin raw and inflamed from the ministrations of his father's needle, needs a bit more time to become accustomed to the arrow stretching its length up his back and over his bald head. He wears them humbly, honored to be the first boy in over a hundred years to sport the blue ink of his ancestors.

They mark him as a master.

When Lin saw his tattoos for the first time, she ran to him, and he lifted her up into his arms, the air around them circling and undulating. He had been gone for a year, traveling with his father, and he had missed her dearly.

When Tenzin visited Lin late in the evening after the altercation that had left her scarred, he was turned away by his mother, but not before he caught a glimpse of her lying on one of the guest beds, the red flesh of her cheek raised and uneven, in stark contrast to the smooth skin of the rest of her face. She'd looked so frail, so alone, lying there in an empty room under white sheets, her body so small without her new metalbending uniform that she'd taken to wearing even on the rare occasions when she wasn't working. Tenzin went out to the pavilion where his father had taken him every morning to meditate since he was a toddler, and prayed for dawn.

Though Lin never paid any notice to her scars, and Tenzin eventually grew accustomed to his tattoos, there was a bond formed between the two. A bond born of skin marred and pain withstood. A bond of the strong, of the enduring.

In the end, they both have marks.

But the tattoos, the burden of Aang's legacy, would eventually tear the two apart.


	2. Family

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Young!Lin is told to draw a family portrait.
> 
> (Note: this chapter was written before it was revealed that Lin had a half-sister).

Once, when Lin was very young, she'd been assigned the task of drawing a family portrait. At first, Lin didn't understand. She went up to her teacher shyly, unsure what a family portrait was supposed to look like. Her teacher, whose gray hair lay in curls about her face, gazed at her over the rims of her wire spectacles.

"Just draw the members of your family," the old woman explained, failing to keep her exasperation completely out of her tone. She'd gone into the teaching profession with a great deal of patience for silly questions, but as she'd aged, she found her tolerance for the hundreds of inane, childish queries she received to be waning.

When Lin didn't move away from her desk, the teacher, whose name was Ms. Wells, felt curiosity replacing the slight irritation that had preceded it. "You do know what a family is, don't you?"

Trembling under the burden of her teacher's piercing gaze, Lin couldn't find her voice.

"Miss Beifong?"

Silence.

Shuffling her feet, Lin was eventually granted the ability to speak.

"Yes," she squeaked, "I know a family is the people that you love."

Ms. Wells seemed to consider this for a moment before amending the girl's definition.

"In some cases, yes, but with regard to a family _portrait_ , your family is made up of those who are immediately related to you, as in your mother, father, and siblings. Some would extend the list to your grandparents, but that is a personal choice. Do you have grandparents, Lin?"

Nodding her head slowly, Lin gave a small, "Yes."

"Can you draw them for me?"

"No."

Once more, silence stretched between them, as Lin seemed to want to shrink into the floor.

"And why not?" there was a warning note in Ms. Wells' voice, as though Lin had better stop being difficult and just do as she was told, for her own sake.

"I don't know what they look like."

It was true; she had never met her grandparents, and her mother, being blind, could not describe their appearances. She'd never seen any pictures of them, as Toph, of course, had no use for photos.

"No matter." Ms. Wells took a deep, calming breath. "Your parents, then. Surely you know what they look like?"

Lin's eyes fell to her feet. Gathering her strength, she spoke quickly, as if afraid she would never say what she needed to say if she had the time to think it through. "I wanted to draw my mother, but you said in the directions that we were supposed to draw the people who take care of us…so I was wondering, Ms. Wells, if I could draw my Aunt and Uncles too, even though they aren't related to me?"

The girl's voice was hopeful, her words rushed towards the end. Finally, Ms. Wells understood her student's dilemma, and felt a bit foolish for having not realized it sooner. She recognized her own lack of sensitivity towards the subject, having forgotten that the famous Toph Beifong was a single parent with only one child.

"Of course, Miss Beifong. Draw whomever you like."

Smiling widely, Lin returned to her desk with excitement. She was going to draw everyone: Aunt Katara and Uncle Aang, Kya, Bumi, and Tenzin, Uncle Sokka, and her mother. When she was done, she had more people in her picture than any of her classmates, but she hardly paid any notice to the strange looks she received. This was her family, after all, and though they shared no ancestors, she knew they were just as close as any other family.

Toph, of course, could not see the picture, but Lin delighted in describing what she had drawn. And the next time they visited Air Temple Island, Lin was sure to bring her drawing along. When she showed the family portrait to her aunt and uncle, there were tears in Katara's eyes for the rest of the evening. Sitting around the dinner table that night, Lin knew that what she told Ms. Wells was true: a family is made up of the people that you love.

And, she thought as her mother beamed at her from across the table, it was made up of the people who love _you_.


	3. Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tenzin ponders the love he lost.

All Tenzin ever wanted was love. True love.

When he found it, he swore he would never let it go. He would keep it held safely against his chest, wings clipped, so it would not fly away. He whispered promises of forever, knowing he would never leave his love alone.

But he did.

He can list hundreds of reasons why it could not work, why it was better to end it, move on, be with someone else who had similar wants and needs. Why, when all was said and done, he did not marry the girl he had dreamed of marrying since he was ten years old. Why, when he sees his children running around the island, he does not question the choices he made. He knew what he _really_ wanted (a _family_ ), and now he has it. It is as simple as that.

Or so he tells himself.

Still, there are days when he wonders. When doubts linger. When he sees the scowl on his first love's face and longs to make her smile. When he realizes, with a start, that she has never been with anyone besides him, even though it has been fourteen years since their relationship ended. When he cannot help but wonder…

Does she still love him?

But with that thought comes a host of others that he will never allow himself to examine. The thoughts are persistent, unyielding, like the subject herself, but he refuses to acknowledge them. (Most of the time).

Because the one thought that cannot be ignored is blasphemous, given his life's events. He has a wife, a family, a career, a _legacy_ to uphold, all of which rely on his honor being preserved. He cannot afford to entertain the one, incorrigible notion that threatens to strip him of all decency.

(Does he still love _her_?)

The thought always comes when he least expects it. When he is gathering his children into the pavilion for morning meditation. When he is sitting in a council meeting, surrounded by irate, stubborn faces. When the sun rises (or sets) and he can still feel the warmth of their first kiss on the shores of Yue Bay, while the sun sank lower and lower into the sea.

At the end of the day, when he lays beside his wife and listens to her gentle breathing, he feels incredibly unclean and undeserving of her unwavering loyalty. She has never loved another, never known the feel of another's touch. He is her first and only love, and it makes him both joyously happy and unbelievably sick, for he cannot say the same. He still remembers the butterfly kisses on his jaw, the light pressure of _her_ lips against his forehead. He calls Lin _her_ even in his thoughts, if only to put some distance between them. But it is an unnecessary measure, for the divide has never been greater, never been this impossibly wide.

There is water between them, in the gap, filling the emptiness with danger. The sea churns, gathers strength, roils and thrashes as though it is tortured by a perpetual storm. He wants to build a bridge, but he hasn't the necessary supplies.

Lin had always loathed the sea.

So the distance remains, the wounds on either side unable to be healed. There is nothing to be done, nothing that can be said that will fix what has been broken. The pieces lay scattered around the city, around the island, and he has hidden the ones that he has found inside his heart, where she cannot get them. His heart belongs to someone else.

Tenzin knew, from the age of ten, that all he ever wanted was love. True, everlasting love.

And when dusk falls, when dawn arrives, when the sun reaches its zenith, when the moon hangs full and heavy over a sleepy city, Tenzin is awake and wondering…

...is there such a thing as everlasting love?


	4. Duty

Lin knows what "duty" means before she knows the definitions of much more elusive terms, such as "sacrifice" and "obligation." She knows that duty is late nights and early mornings spent sitting by the door, waiting to be sure that her mother made it home just one more time. Duty is the darkness that pools itself beneath her mother's sightless eyes, the bags that have no right to make her look as though she hasn't slept since before the war. Duty is never knowing if the police caught the bad guy, but praying that even if they didn't, she wouldn't lose her only parent to the cause of catching him. Duty was joining the police academy at sixteen, graduating at eighteen, and becoming the Chief of Police at twenty-two. Duty was giving up your own safety to preserve the lives of your neighbors, friends, and family.

Duty was a scary, scary word, and Lin never grew to like it, because once out of childhood, duty kept her away from the one thing more important to her than her responsibility to Republic City: Tenzin.

* * *

Tenzin had always hated "obligations," as his father called them. They involved getting up at the crack of dawn to meditate, feeding the flying bison thrice daily, making his bed, cleaning his room, helping to set the table. Obligations ate into his free time, into his leisure, and he hardly had any time for playing as it was. Obligations made his back ache with the strain of keeping it completely straight as he meditated. They made his fingertips shrivel up from washing the dishes in the sink. They made him hold his breath as he cleaned the excrement out of the bison's caves. They made him miss his father on the nights when council meetings ran late.

Obligations were terrible, terrible things, and he did not warm up to them, especially when they started to tear away at his relationship with his childhood friend, Lin.

One had a duty to the city, to what her mother had left behind.

The other had a duty to his heritage, to what would never come again if he did not produce it himself.

Duty defined the lines in the sand that neither could cross. But cross them they did, for better or worse.

Duty, after all, was just a scary word. And scary words can't hurt you if, for just a moment, you forget what they mean.


End file.
